The unemployment insurance (UI) system helps many people who have lost their jobs by temporarily replacing part of their wages. (See “Introduction to Unemployment Insurance.”) Workers in most states are eligible for up to 26 weeks of benefits from the regular state-funded unemployment compensation program, although eight states provide fewer …

An underappreciated factor in long-term budget projections is how the projected interest rate (“R”) that the federal government pays on its debt and the projected growth rate of the economy (“G”) relate to one another. In a nutshell, policymakers can more easily restore the nation’s fiscal …

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) is the nation’s most important anti-hunger program, reaching nearly 47 million people nationwide in 2013 alone. These fact sheets provide state-by-state data on who participates in the SNAP program, the benefits they receive, and SNAP’s role in strengthening …

The United States went through its longest, and by most measures worst economic recession since the Great Depression between December 2007 and June 2009. This chart book documents the course of the economy following that recession against the background of how deep a hole the recession created – and how much deeper …

Thank you for the invitation to testify today. I am Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a policy institute in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and analysis on budget, tax, and economic policy, policies related to poverty, and a number of social programs. The Center has no …

The National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs have long sought to ease the paperwork burdens of assessing and tracking family income in schools serving very high concentrations of poor and low-income children. At those schools, little purpose is served in devoting resources to identifying the few children who …

This searchable database provides information on which eligible schools adopted the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) for the 2014-2015 school year. Community eligibility is a powerful new tool to ensure that low-income children have access to breakfast and lunch at no charge through the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. This year …

The House may soon vote on a measure to repeal the 2.3-percent excise tax on medical devices that policymakers enacted in 2010 to help pay for health reform. The excise tax is sound, however, and the arguments against the tax don’t withstand scrutiny.
The tax does not single out the medical device industry for unfair …

The broad facts of income inequality over the past six decades are easily summarized:
The years from the end of World War II into the 1970s were ones of substantial economic growth and broadly shared prosperity.
Incomes grew rapidly and at roughly the same rate up and down the income ladder, roughly …

More than 16 million people in low- and modest-income working families, including 8 million children, would fall into — or deeper into — poverty in 2018 if policymakers fail to make permanent key provisions of two important tax credits (see Figure 1). Some 50 million Americans, including 25 million children, …

Policymakers have made substantial progress in recent years in “making work pay” for low-income families with children by strengthening the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit. (See the box at the end of this paper.) But low-income childless workers — that is, adults without children and non-custodial …

The 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA) imposes tight limits on annual appropriations, first by creating caps that apply each year through 2021 and then by requiring additional reductions through a process known as sequestration. The law directed that the first year of this sequestration, 2013, would come through across-the-board …

Half of all states plus the District of Columbia have enacted their own version of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to help working families earning low wages meet basic needs. State EITCs build on the success of the federal credit by keeping working parents on the job and families and children out of poverty.…

Legislatures in most states (34 states plus the District of Columbia) can approve tax bills with a simple majority vote in each house, the same margin required for practically every other bill. In the other 16 states, some or all tax bills require a supermajority vote of each house (plus the …

House leaders plan to schedule votes this week on seven bills recently approved by the Ways and Means Committee to make permanent an array of “tax extenders,” a set of primarily corporate tax provisions that policymakers routinely extend for a year or two at a time. The seven measures, which will likely be packaged …

What Is WIC?
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, popularly known as WIC, provides nutritious foods, counseling on healthy eating, breastfeeding support, and health care referrals to more than 8 million low-income women, infants, and children at …

The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV), a federal and state partnership that supports family- and child-related home visiting programs in every state, will expire at the end of fiscal year 2014 unless Congress takes steps to extend it — threatening a host of programs that have proven …

SNAP spending, which rose substantially as a share of the economy (gross domestic product or GDP) in the wake of the Great Recession, has begun to decline, as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and other experts expected.
FIGURE 1
SNAP spending fell as a share of GDP in 2014, …

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Representative Fred Upton (R-MI), and Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) proposed yesterday to repeal most of health reform (the Affordable Care Act or ACA), convert Medicaid into a program whose federal funding is capped and no longer responds to changes in the costs of medical care, and create a modest new …

Today’s strong jobs report shows continuing labor market improvement but also continuing significant “slack” — people who are not working but want to be, or people who want to work full time but can only find part-time jobs. Prominent among those struggling to find …

Considerable uncertainty surrounds the potential scope of the “waivers for state innovation” authorized under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which allow states to modify how they implement key elements of health reform beginning in 2017. Also known as “1332 waivers” for the section of the ACA creating …

President Obama is proposing a surprisingly ambitious budget that would make progress — in some cases modest, in others large — in various areas in which policy sclerosis has prevented the nation from addressing significant problems. It would expand opportunity, especially for children; reform various programs …

The President’s budget would provide relief from “sequestration” cuts to non-defense and defense appropriations in 2016 and future years to allow increased funding in areas such as education, scientific research, infrastructure, and national security. It would fully offset these restorations by alternate …

Disclosure of government spending through sound financial reporting is essential to a well-functioning democracy. The public needs to know how resources are being spent, what legal obligations the government is incurring and for what purposes, and how today’s decisions will constrain future budgets. To the extent possible, such …

Half of the states and the District of Columbia have enacted earned income tax credits (EITCs) to supplement the federal EITC, the nation’s most effective tool for reducing poverty among working families and children. The federal EITC lifted 6.2 million people — more than half of them children — out of …

Twenty-six states (counting the District of Columbia) have created earned income tax credits (EITCs) to help families struggling to get by on low wages make ends meet and provide basic necessities for their children. These credits build on the benefits of the federal EITC, offering a hand up to …

Republican leaders plan to use a special legislative process called “reconciliation” to advance their fiscal policy agenda in 2015.[1] Created by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, reconciliation allows for expedited consideration of certain tax, spending, and debt limit legislation. In the Senate, …

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is preparing to extend through 2028 the Moving to Work (MTW) demonstration, which waives program rules and sets special funding formulas for 39 of the state and local agencies administering the Housing Choice Voucher and public housing programs. HUD intends to address some key …

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a federal tax credit for low- and moderate-income working people. It encourages and rewards work as well as offsets federal payroll and income taxes. Twenty-six states, including the District of Columbia, have established their their own EITCs to supplement the federal credit.
Who Is Eligible, and for How …

The tax code strongly favors income from capital gains — increases in the value of assets, such as stocks — over income from wages and salaries. These preferences are economically inefficient: they promote tax schemes that convert ordinary income into capital gains and encourage people to hold assets just to escape tax, even …

In recent decades, economic growth has powerfully benefitted Wall Street, while leaving much of Main Street behind. The plan that President Obama unveiled today would take large, important steps to help redress part of the imbalance and make prosperity more broadly shared. The …

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) are successful federal tax credits for low- and moderate-income working people that encourage work, help offset the cost of raising children, and lift millions of people out of poverty.
Recent research suggests that income from these credits leads to …

State and local investments in schools, roads, hospitals, and other infrastructure provide the foundation for a vibrant economy and high quality of life. Borrowing — by issuing bonds — is a tried-and-true way to finance the cost of building and maintaining this infrastructure. Projects financed with bonds can …

Policymakers and commentators in Washington are focusing more on how tax-based and safety net program benefits for low- and moderate-income families phase down in response to higher earnings, how the phase-down translates into “marginal tax rates,” and how those rates affect the work habits of beneficiaries.
The …

Today’s jobs report shows a labor market that strengthened significantly in 2014, but one that still bears scars from the Great Recession and subsequent federal budget cuts and other austerity policies that perpetuated a severe jobs slump even as the economy and business profits began to …

The federal estate tax is a tax on property (cash, real estate, stock, or other assets) transferred from deceased persons to their heirs. Only the wealthiest estates pay the tax because it is levied only on the portion of an estate’s value that exceeds a specified exemption level — $5.43 million per person …

About 6 percent of the nation’s working-age population receives disability payments from Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and people who depend on those benefits live in every state, county, and congressional district. Nevertheless, there’s a distinct …

States with high rates of disability receipt tend to have populations that are less educated, older, and more blue-collar than other states and to have fewer immigrants.[1] In fact, those four factors alone are associated with about 85 percent of the variation in disability receipt rates across states.
That conclusion is …

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the nation’s most important anti-hunger program.
SNAP reaches millions of people who need food assistance. It is one of the few means-tested government benefit programs available to almost all households with low incomes. For more detail on the program’s basics, see …

What Is SNAP?
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) is the nation’s most important anti-hunger program. In 2014, it helped more than 46 million low-income Americans to afford a nutritionally adequate diet in a typical month.
Close to 70 percent of SNAP participants are in families with …

Congressional leaders have tentatively scheduled a House vote early in January on a measure to raise the threshold for health reform’s employer mandate from 30 to 40 hours.[1] The health reform law requires employers with at least 50 full-time-equivalent workers to offer health coverage to employees who work 30 or more hours a …

Roughly 1 million of the nation’s poorest people will be cut off SNAP (formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) over the course of 2016, due to the return in many areas of a three-month limit on SNAP benefits for unemployed adults aged 18-50 who aren’t disabled or raising minor children. These individuals will lose …

House Republicans plan to amend House rules this week to require the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) to use “dynamic scoring” for official cost estimates of tax reform and other major legislation.[1] Under dynamic scoring, the official cost estimates would incorporate estimates …

Congress should reject calls to use “dynamic scoring,” which includes estimates of how proposed policies would affect the size of the economy and thus revenues, in official cost estimates for tax reform and other major legislation.[1] Modeling the economy is extraordinarily difficult; even the best analyses leave …

States’ choices about investing in schools, health care, child care, and other services can either help create opportunity and prosperity for people or hold them back. This short video explains how the State Priorities Partnership, a national network of 41 independent state policy organizations, works to:
strengthen policies that affect low- and moderate-income families, such as health …

Enacted in 1997 and expanded with bipartisan support since 2001, the Child Tax Credit (CTC) helps working families offset the cost of raising children. It is worth up to $1,000 per eligible child (under age 17 at the end of the tax year).
Taxpayers eligible for the credit subtract it from the total amount of federal income taxes they would otherwise …

“Our plan would … ensure that our tax code works together with the federal welfare system, so that low-income workers are able to climb into the middle class without having to overcome 80%-100% effective marginal tax rates,” Republican Senators Mike Lee and Marco Rubio wrote in a recent op-ed explaining the …

Policymakers need to replenish the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund by late 2016. That necessity comes as no surprise and does not pose a crisis, and policymakers can address it with a simple, time-honored solution: boosting DI’s share of the Social Security payroll tax, which also funds …

About one in four former or current armed-forces families with children — 1.4 million families — receive either the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) or the low-income component of the Child Tax Credit (CTC), two tax credits for low- and moderate-income working families, according to an analysis of Census and IRS data. …

After rising modestly in response to the economic downturn, the national caseload for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is below its pre-recession level — in spite of continued high unemployment. In December 2013, 1.7 million families received TANF, 7 percent fewer than in December 2006. TANF caseloads peaked in December 2010 at 2 …

States have broad flexibility over the use of state and federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds, and many spend a significant share of the funds outside the core welfare reform areas. In 2013, states spent slightly more than one-quarter of the funds on basic assistance to meet essential needs of families with children; they spent another …

People in 34 states[1] who enrolled in health coverage for 2014 through the Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) will be automatically re-enrolled in the same plan in 2015 unless they choose a new plan through the FFM during the open enrollment season, which began November 15 (see Figure 1).[2] While auto-renewal is an …

The Administration has requested $6.2 billion in supplemental appropriations to continue and expand measures to respond to the Ebola epidemic and has asked that these amounts be provided on an emergency basis, meaning they would not count toward the Budget Control Act’s (BCA) …

Fiscal year 2015 will almost inevitably be another year of shrinking real resources for non-defense discretionary (NDD) programs, which encompass all non-defense spending other than interest payments and entitlement programs. In Congress’ negotiations over 2015 funding levels during the lame-duck session, the Budget …

Although both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees formulated their appropriations bills for fiscal year 2015 to comply with the 2011 Budget Control Act’s (BCA) caps, the two committees have allocated the available funding in different ways. (See appendix.) For at least three key domestic bills — …

With the government operating under a short-term continuing resolution (CR) through December 11, it is important that Congress adopt full-year appropriations for fiscal year 2015 before adjourning. If appropriations are delayed until the new Congress takes office, final resolution likely won’t come until roughly halfway …

Some members of Congress, including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, as well as various outside groups are calling for “dynamic scoring” to estimate the budgetary effects of major legislation, notably tax reform proposals.[1] Congress, however, should resist the temptation to use dynamic scoring, which …

During Congress’ lame-duck session, some members are expected to try to reinstate and even permanently extend the “bonus depreciation” tax break as part of legislation continuing various “tax extenders” (a package of primarily corporate tax provisions that policymakers routinely extend). Bonus …

Following the sequestration funding cuts in 2013, most state and local housing agencies had no choice but to sharply reduce the number of families receiving housing vouchers.[1] By December 2013, agencies were assisting about 70,000 fewer families than they had a year earlier, and the cuts continued to deepen during the first …

Roughly 1.7 million veterans live in households that participated in SNAP (formerly food stamps) at some point during the past 12 months, CBPP analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey finds. In every state, thousands of struggling veterans use SNAP to help put food on the table; in two …

Rental assistance helps more than 340,000 veterans — the great majority of them poor or near poor — afford decent housing. It appears to have played a central role in the 33 percent reduction in veterans’ homelessness between 2010 and 2014, and it allows recipients to devote more of their limited resources …

In enacting final housing appropriations for fiscal year 2015, Congress should include a provision contained in the Senate Appropriations Committee-approved funding bill to expand the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD). RAD helps local housing agencies revitalize and preserve some public housing by permitting them to …

Today’s solid jobs report shows the labor market continues to improve in important ways but that wage growth continues to languish (see chart) — suggesting that the Federal Reserve should wait until the labor market improves enough to boost wages before raising interest rates.
Average …

Cash assistance benefits for the nation’s poorest families with children fell again in purchasing power in 2014 and are now at least 20 percent below their 1996 levels in 38 states, after adjusting for inflation. While eight states raised Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits between July 2013 (the …

The 1996 welfare law provides $15 million each year for research and demonstration projects to expand our knowledge of effective ways to improve employment and earnings among TANF recipients and other poor families. This modest but stable funding source has helped states, localities, and welfare-to-work programs design more …

Most states’ prison populations are at historic highs after decades of extraordinary growth; in 36 states, the prison population has more than tripled as a share of the state population since 1978. This rapid growth, which continued even after crime rates fell substantially in the 1990s, has been costly. …

Some proponents of state income tax cuts are making highly inaccurate claims about the impact of interstate migration patterns on states with relatively high income taxes based on a misleading reading of Internal Revenue Service data.
Those making these arguments claim that many of the people who leave states with relatively …

Indiana has proposed to expand Medicaid and extend health coverage to as many as 374,000[1] uninsured Hoosiers through the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP) 2.0. This is a newdemonstration project, or “waiver,” that incorporates features from the state’s existing Medicaid waiver, which was approved prior to …

States are providing less per-pupil funding for kindergarten through 12th grade than they did seven years ago — often far less. The reduced levels reflect primarily the lingering effects of the 2007-09 recession. At a time when states and the nation need workers with the skills to master new technologies and …

At least 30 states are spending less per K-12 student — often far less — than before the Great Recession hit seven years ago, a new CBPP report finds. The cuts undermine education reform and hinder schools’ ability to deliver high-quality education, harming the nation’s economic competitiveness over the long term.
“At …

Executive Summary
Most parents want to raise their children in neighborhoods with good schools, safe streets, and neighbors who support their efforts to raise healthy, happy, and successful families. Their hopes are well-placed because a growing body of evidence supports two conclusions about how …

Where a child grows up can be a critical influence on his or her lifelong health and success, and improvements to federal rental assistance programs could have a big impact on children’s life outcomes, a report released today by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) finds.
Only 15 percent of the nearly 4 million children in families …

Today’s generally solid report shows that employers are back on track creating more than 200,000 jobs a month after a dip in August (see chart). Nevertheless, the economy has substantial room for further expansion, allowing the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low to spur higher …

Most families and individuals who meet the program’s income guidelines are eligible for food stamps. The size of a family’s food stamp benefit is based on its income and certain expenses. This paper provides a short summary of eligibility and benefit calculation rules.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC) health plan (H.R. 3121) unveiled last year has received renewed attention in recent months, due to the election of Steve Scalise (R-LA) — the chairman of the RSC when the plan was developed — as House majority whip (the number three position in the House Republican leadership).…

The percentage of Americans without health coverage fell slightly in 2013, the Census Bureau announced September 16, marking the third consecutive year of decline from a recent high point in 2010. The number of uninsured Americans also declined slightly, to 45.2 million in 2013 from 45.6 million in 2012. No substantial change …

The poverty rate dropped significantly in 2013 for the first time since 2006 and only the second time since 2000, Census data released September 16 show. Incomes were unchanged for middle-income households, and income inequality remained at or near record levels by a number of measures.
The improvements in income and …

The SNAP Academy is a webinar series that seeks to educate state and local advocates, application assisters, and outreach workers with information on SNAP. The goal is to improve understanding of the program.
The webinar topics include:
Overview of SNAP and its role in the safety net,
Who is eligible and household …

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities held a conference call briefing for journalists Tuesday, September 16, at 2:00 p.m. (ET) to examine the new Census Bureau data for 2013 on poverty, health insurance coverage, and income trends that were released earlier that day. Robert Greenstein, CBPP …

Today’s Census data provide fresh evidence that the economy strengthened in 2013, but too slowly to improve the living standards of many middle- and low-income Americans. Median household income did not rise significantly and remained 8.0 percent (or $4,497) below its level in 2007, …

Proposals to convert Medicare to a “premium support” system would replace its guarantee of health coverage with a flat payment, or voucher, that beneficiaries would use to purchase either private health insurance or, in some versions, a form of traditional fee-for-service Medicare. Proponents of premium support …

On September 16, the Census Bureau will release official statistics on poverty and inequality in 2013. Several points are worth noting in advance of the release.
As in Other Recent Recoveries, Poverty Has Been Slow to Improve
Over time, poverty rates tend to move roughly in tandem with economic indicators, which generally …

The Census Bureau will release estimates on September 16 of the number and share of Americans without health coverage in 2013, based on its annual Current Population Survey (CPS). While the CPS is the most widely used source of health coverage information, significant changes in its health coverage questions instituted for 2013 …

A recent study on how the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program responded to increased need during the Great Recession, by Ron Haskins and Kimberly Howard of the Brookings Institution and Vicky Albert of the University of Nevada, asserts that “TANF was more responsive to the recession than critics have …

This backgrounder describes the laws and procedures under which Congress decides how much money to spend each year, what to spend it on, and how to raise the money to pay for that spending. The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 lays out a formal framework for developing and enforcing a …

The House this week is scheduled to consider a bill (H.R. 3522) sponsored by Rep. William Cassidy (R-LA) that would allow insurance companies, through 2018, to continue to offer to any small employer the health insurance plans in the small group market that the insurers were selling in 2013.[1] Under the bill, such plans …

In a recent commentary, I raised serious concerns about the centerpiece of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s new poverty plan — his sweeping proposal to merge 11 programs ranging from SNAP (food stamps) to the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) into a single block grant.[1] The Manhattan …

Today’s disappointing jobs report, while perhaps only a blip in an ongoing labor market recovery, is a sober reminder of how devastating the Great Recession and subsequent prolonged jobs slump has been for workers. In particular, the share of the population with a job, which plunged to …

Every state estimates how much revenue it will collect in the upcoming fiscal year. A reliable estimate is essential to building a fiscally responsible budget and sets a benchmark for how much funding the state will be able to provide to schools and other public services. Yet some states forecast revenues using faulty …

As states continue to recover from the recession, state lawmakers should look to help working families recover, too. They can do this effectively by strengthening their states’ earned income tax credits (EITCs) and minimum wages. EITCs and the minimum wage are twin pillars of making work pay for families that earn …

What Is a Minimum Wage?
Minimum wage laws set the lowest hourly rate an employer can legally pay workers covered under the law. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 per hour. Where states and municipalities have enacted their own, higher, minimum wage laws, employers must pay at least the state or local minimum. As of August …

Eighteen years ago, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant was created as a part of the 1996 welfare reform law to replace the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. Welfare reform provided states with a fixed block grant in exchange for greater flexibility in how they could use the funds. In addition, for the first time, cash …

Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia are now implementing health reform’s Medicaid expansion. Arkansas, Iowa, and Michigan have expanded through federally approved Medicaid demonstration projects, or “waivers.” Waivers provide states additional flexibility in how they operate their Medicaid …

Executive Summary
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides over 8 million struggling elderly individuals and individuals with disabilities (as well as millions of other low-income households) with benefits that they can use to purchase food. Many low-income …

Few budgetary concepts generate as much unintended confusion and deliberate misinformation as the Social Security trust funds. Political candidates of both parties accuse their opponents of “raiding” the trust funds.[1] Some writers disparage the trust funds as “funny money,” “IOUs,” …

Social Security can pay full benefits for close to two decades, the trustees’ latest annual report shows, but will then face a significant, though manageable, funding shortfall that the President and Congress should address in the near future.[1] Doing so would permit changes that are gradual rather than sudden and allow …